ITALIAN LOBBYING SHAMBLES: Confindustria, the Italian business lobbying association, last week fired the head of its delegation in Brussels, Gianfranco Dell’Alba, after around €500,000 went missing in unusual circumstances, Italian media reported. The group is powerful not only in Italy, where it owns the financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore, but also in Brussels: the president of BusinessEurope is Emma Marcegaglia who led Confindustria from 2008 until 2012.

Email warning: According to the reports, Dell’Alba — a former MEP — was sent an email by someone pretending to be his boss, Confindustria general director Marcella Panucci, asking for €500,000 to be transferred to what turned out to be a fake bank account. The email asked Dell’Alba not to call Panucci as she was unavailable. The money was taken from the Confindustria account by whomever was behind the scam. There’s no suggestion that Dell’Alba or Panucci had anything to do with the fraud but Dell’Alba was sacked because his Belgian employment contract doesn’t allow for a suspension, Confindustria told Influence.

What’s going on? Italian media say that, at the very least, the story raises eyebrows about how Confindustria is run. How come an official was authorized to move vast sums of money without further checks? How was it so easy to seize control of the email of a top manager or fake their identity? Giuseppe Turani, a leading financial journalist, said if Confindustria’s version of events is true, then “many people would have to be fired.”

Confindustria’s troubles: The lobby group has had a rocky time of late. It openly backed the constitutional referendum called by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi which led to his resignation last December. Ahead of the vote, its research institute published a report describing a doomsday scenario if Renzi lost, with economic losses and people plunged into poverty. Renzi did lose but the economy has been growing. As for Il Sole 24 Ore, which is a listed company, the group is accused of inflating the numbers of its digital subscribers and thereby misleading investors. Milan prosecutors are investigating.

BEHIND THE MONSANTO (SORT OF) BAN: At a meeting last week, the leaders of the European Parliament’s political groups decided to strip two Monsanto lobbyists of the badges that allow them to enter the institution after the firm’s chief executive refused to appear at a hearing to discuss leaked company documents. MEPs have threatened such action before, but never gone through with it.

Updated rules: MEPs can use their updated rules of procedure by asking for “the withdrawal or temporary de-activation of long-term access badges” if companies refuse to turn up for hearings — the only way lawmakers can “punish” a reluctant firm. A trigger for the unprecedented move was the tone of a letter sent by Philip Miller, Monsanto’s vice president for corporate affairs, to the Parliament’s leaders, which was described as laden with “disdain” by a Parliament official. Parliamentary group leaders were said to be “very angry about the letter,” Influence was told. It is up to the quaestors — five MEPs in charge of the administrative matters in the Parliament — to sign off on a ban. A member of the parliamentary body, Andrey Kovatchev, told Influence “this question shall be discussed by the quaestors as soon as possible.”

There’s a catch: Monsanto says it has done nothing wrong. And there’s nothing stopping any MEP from signing in a Monsanto representative as a guest. The company is also a member of several trade associations and lobbying groups, such as the European Crop Protection Association (ECPA), and four consultancies declared that they worked for Monsanto in 2016 — Interel, Hume Brophy, RedFlag and FleishmanHillard. According to the EU transparency register, Monsanto spent around €1 million with those four companies last year.

Not everyone is happy: Swedish MEP Christofer Fjellnerblasted the decision to ban Monsanto, arguing it will undermine his work on GMOs. Jill Craig, managing director of Hume Brophy, also disagreed with the decision, saying “we don’t believe that selective banning of organizations over the political difference of the day is the appropriate approach to take for a democratic institution like the European Parliament.” ECPA’s Graeme Taylor said it was political posturing, adding: “Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it’s someone else’s witch being hunted.”

Is Caterpillar next? According to a letter sent to Parliament President Antonio Tajani, Green MEP Sven Giegold wants U.S-based engineering company Caterpillar to be stripped of its parliamentary access after the company declined to appear before a committee investigating the Panama Papers scandal. “Shying away from the European Parliament’s public hearing on Caterpillar’s efforts in tax dumping will not keep such practices under wraps,” Giegold said in a statement. Jerome Bandry, Caterpillar’s EU government affairs director, disagreed, saying his firm “strictly adheres to the code of conduct” and in return “fully expect[s] a fair treatment as well as a level playing field between stakeholders in the European Parliament.” In a statement, Caterpillar said they declined to attend the hearing as they could not provide the “relevant expertise.” Parliament leaders discussed Caterpillar’s badges on Thursday but didn’t make any decisions, leaving it to the committee to decide this week. More details here.

BIOFUELS LOBBY VICTORY: The biofuels lobby, backed by big farming countries, just landed a big win in Brussels. The Estonian presidency of the Council proposed last week ditching a controversial cap on food-based biofuels in answer to pressure from several farming countries across Europe. Our colleagues Marion Solletty and Kalina Oroschakoff have the ins and outs of the episode.

**The Annual POLITICO 28 Gala Dinner is coming back to Brussels on Wednesday, December 6, 2017, when we will reveal our list of the 28 people who will shape European life and politics in the upcoming year. We hope you can join us for a memorable evening! Get in touch to discover a range of sponsorship opportunities at our flagship event.**

ALBER & GEIGER PAIRS UP WITH TRUMP LOBBYIST: German consultancy Alber & Geiger has joined forces with Florida-based Ballard Partners, whose founder has ties to Donald Trump, having acted as his lobbyist in the state between 2013 and 2015. “I find him to be an incredibly fine human being,” said Brian Ballard in an interview with Tampa Bay Times. Ballard has recently taken on as clients the government of Turkey and the Socialist Party of Albania, while Alber & Geiger discloses just two clients on the EU transparency register — the Gauselmann Group, which manufactures slot machines, and Piraeus Bank, a Greek financial institution — with an annual lobbying turnover of up to €999,999. “[Ballard’s] strong relationships with the United States federal government will be advantageous for our clients with interests in America, and we are proud to leverage our in-depth knowledge of the EU for Ballard’s clients as well,” said Siegbert Alber, the consultancy’s chairman.

ITI COMES TO TOWN: The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) has arrived in Brussels and has hired, as we reported back in June, Guido Lobrano from BusinessEurope. Brussels already has plenty of associations representing the tech industry, so it will be interesting to see how ITI will seek to carve out a niche for itself. Our tech colleagues asked DigitalEurope whether they felt ITI was encroaching on their turf. “We welcome the fact that they establish presence in Brussels,” a spokesperson said. “We share several multinational corporate members and will join forces in some common public advocacy campaigns.”

THINK TANK CRITICIZES SHADY NGO FUNDING: “Follow the money” has become a well-rehearsed mantra used by lobbyists to question the integrity of civil society organizations. The latest attack comes from the U.S.-based Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E), which issued a report setting out the links between Fred Stanback, a American financier, and several well-known environmental NGOs operating in the U.K. “It’s troubling that these so-called environmentalist organizations in the U.S. and U.K are either willfully or unknowingly colluding with extremist population control and anti-immigration activist groups funded by a few extremely wealthy Americans,” said Craig Richardson, E&E’s president.

Practice what you preach: What’s odd is that E&E doesn’t disclose where it gets its funding from either. A 2011 report by the Institute for South Studies linked E&E — then called the American Tradition Institute — to the Koch Brothers, while the bankruptcy filings of coal producer Alpha Natural Resources showed that Chris Horner, a lawyer at E&E, had received funding from the firm, according to a 2015 report by The Intercept. Both Horner and Steve Milloy, fellows at the institute, served on Donald Trump’s transition team. Questions about E&E’s funding and links to the Trump administration went unanswered.

Commission rejects Hungary NGO law assurances: The European Commission has given the Hungarian government a month to make changes to a law that forces NGOs to disclose which foreign individuals or entities are donating funds — or face proceedings at the European Court of Justice.

FAIR ENERGY UPDATE: Alan Riley, chairman of Fair Energy, which we wrote about last week and which was until Thursday described as an independent think tank, contacted Brussels Influence to say there was nothing opaque about the organization. He told us that he’d said in the spring that it should be called a campaign organization and that its supporters, which he confirmed included Ukrainian firm Naftogaz, should be disclosed. “Unfortunately my directions to update the website were not carried out,” he told Brussels Influence. “At most you can say that this was a blunder of a new organization trying to work out how to structure itself. There is no mystery here.” He also said that his work for Naftogaz and Polish company PGNIG was clearly disclosed in the articles he has penned.